


Magic

by MissAppropriation



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Childhood Friends, Conversations, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29538441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAppropriation/pseuds/MissAppropriation
Summary: Theta and Kossei disagree over the concept of magic.
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor | Theta Sigma & The Master | Koschei (Doctor Who: Academy Era)
Kudos: 4





	Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Been a while!
> 
> For those of you following me, I haven't been writing much but I do have quite a few fics ready to go from before my muse deserted me, so I will try to start posting those. <3 <3
> 
> For those of you who are new... Welcome! I write Master fic. :)
> 
> This one isn't my favorite that I've written, but there's a couple good ideas in here so... Shrug.
> 
> (A/N: I've spelled Koschei as Kossei because it looks more Gallifreyan to me that way. Apologies if that throws anyone off!)

**Magic**

"There's no such thing as magic," Theta scoffed.

"Well," Kossei replied dryly, "obviously not. I'm considering the concept, not saying it's _real_. Try to pay attention," he sighed.

Theta paused in his work, forehead creased as he rewound the conversation, filling in details around the single word which had caught his ear. It was an old Theta trick and the only way he got through any of their classes with a barely-passing grade.

Kossei waited for him to catch up.

"What's interesting about the concept?" Theta asked dutifully after a moment.

Kossei smiled.

 _So glad you asked!_

"Clearly," he began, taking his time, "it's primitive fantasy. A catch-all term to describe events the lower species could never begin to understand."

"But it _doesn't_ describe them," Theta responded curtly.

Kossei blinked, surprised to be cut off so soon. And at his friend's tone. Theta's voice held an edge of anger, which was unusual for him. Kossei reached out telepathically, trying to sound out the specific emotion.

Theta seemed... _Offended?_

Offended by the concept.

 _Interesting_.

"Go on," Kossei invited.

Theta took a moment to collect enough of his thoughts to begin. He never knew quite where he was going when he started. Sometimes even when he arrived.

For a little while, Kossei had considered the possibility that Theta's directionless, unplanned fumbling was an act, a ploy. It seemed too comically exaggerated to be genuine.

But he had quickly dismissed that explanation. Theta's earnest inability to see five minutes into the future was entirely real. There just wasn't room in his thought processes for what might happen next, too caught up in the _now_. 

His brain collected as many immediate, unfinished thoughts as it could hold, every minute of every day.

Even his dreams never held one tone for long.

Like he _couldn't_ stop; because if he did, he might miss out on the one, best thing ever known.

"It's _lazy_ ," Theta pronounced after a moment.

Kossei frowned. He'd need more than two words to keep up with that runaway train of thought. "Explain," he said.

Theta sighed, exasperated as he pulled together multiple sentences out of the chaos. "What if _we_ said that? All the things we've seen, all the things we can do which seem impossible to most of the Universe..." Theta's eyes flitted to Kossei's face, still relatively new to both of them, even though he had had ample time to grow into it by now. 

Kossei felt a pang of _something_ \- something immensely complex and painful - from his friend.

Theta glanced away and kept talking.

"What if we looked at all of that and just called it _magic_?" Theta asked. His eyes met his friend's, intensely sincere. "How much would we have _missed_?"

Kossei didn't say anything. He knew Theta wasn't finished talking, even if Theta didn't know that himself.

And neither of them had any idea what he might say next.

Kossei found most interactions intensely boring. Everyone else he'd ever met was so disgustingly predictable.

If he could be bothered, he knew he could plan out every conversation before even _having_ it. Sometimes down to the word. Most people unfailingly, disappointingly, said exactly what you expected them to. 

And then, what was even the point?

Not Theta, though. 

Even with telepathy, even having known each other since they were both so young, even after all their adventures and all the things they had debated and agreed on over the years... So often, Theta was delightfully impossible to predict.

"Everything has an explanation," Theta continued, "if you're willing to look for it. It's _science_ , not _magic_." He spread his arms, shaking his head. "And isn't that _better_?"

"It is," Kossei said.

Theta's eyes narrowed, suspicious that his friend's unqualified concession was some sort of trap. Kossei briefly considered setting up such a conversational pitfall, just because he _could_... But the current discussion was far too interesting to waste on such short-lived satisfaction.

"I completely agree," Kossei said, causing Theta's frown to deepen. Kossei laughed. "No, really, you're right. It _is_ lazy. I'm not arguing! But lazy or not, think about it: of all the places we've been, how many have had the concept of magic?"

Theta's frown vanished. "Nearly all of them," he said after a few moments of consideration.

"Precisely," Kossei said. "As a concept, as an _instinct_ , it's practically universal."

Theta looked at his friend questioningly. "So?" he asked. Interested, unconfrontational.

Theta set everything aside to learn something new. It was the only thing that ever kept him still.

"So, where does that impulse come from?" Kossei asked. "When they say _magic_ , what do they _mean_?"

Theta considered. "I suppose they mean that they don't understand," he concluded.

Kossei nodded. Such an incredibly useful instinct for people to have. To see something incomprehensible and to short-circuit all logical thought. To give such a self-destructive concept a _name_.

Theta was still looking at him and now the offense had crept back into his eyes. "But they _could_ ," he pronounced judgmentally.

Kossei thought about the primitives they had encountered across the galaxies and chuckled. "Hardly," he said.

There was very little which was truly inexplicable to a Time Lord of Gallifrey. But their society was the exception rather than the rule. Gallifrey was so far above the rest of the Universe that all the other "civilizations" might as well have been composed of microbes. Not only did they fail to understand how much of a gap existed between their "achievements" and what Gallifrey had attained... They were so far behind, they didn't even know there was a _contest_. 

This was why the concept of magic was so delightfully widespread: because the lower species milled about in constant confusion, unable to explain the vast majority of what they encountered in their own tiny lives.

For a moment, oddly, Theta seemed to disagree. "I don't know about that..." he mused uncertainly.

But Kossei continued, too absorbed in all the possibilities he had foreseen to pause for Theta's unfinished ideas.

"You have to admit," Kossei said, "it's a fascinating impulse: to see something new and feel the need to give it a name that specifically denotes one's inability to categorize it." He laughed at the contradiction. "And of course, it works the other way around, too. Call something 'magic' and you greatly increase the chances that your audience will be too caught up in the temptation of fantasy to examine it properly."

" _What_ audience?" Theta inquired with an expression of long-suffering amusement.

Kossei shrugged, avoiding his friend's gaze with a smile. He had a few ideas... But he wasn't quite ready to let Theta in on any of those yet.

That time would come.

"One word," Kossei said instead, earnestly enthused, forefinger raised for emphasis. "And you can immediately evoke wonder, fear, awe."

Theta shook his head emphatically. "Not everyone is so easily fooled," he asserted. "A moment of examination and the illusion would vanish. You're presupposing _no one_ would question an entire concept. A _baseless_ concept."

Kossei had to smile. "Well. Most people aren't _you_ ," he said.

When Theta saw something wondrous, something that inspired fear and awe, something which everyone else had dubbed _magical_ , he immediately began dissecting it down to the nano level. 

As if its surface must conceal ever deeper marvels within.

And somehow, he always found what he was searching for in the end.

Unsurprisingly, Theta seemed confused by Kossei's response. 

Theta often seemed confused... Kossei had come to appreciate that that was just how Theta operated, how he learned.

No one else on Gallifrey was ever confused. They took everything at its face value, uncurious, unquestioning.

Useful, potentially... 

But mostly just unendurably dull.

Colorless, thoughtless, plodding.

_Worthless._

Which is why Kossei spent as much time as possible with Theta.

He couldn't imagine why everyone else didn't do the same. How did they withstand the constant, suffocating boredom?

Worse, they even seemed _content_ with their endlessly meaningless existence.

That was something Kossei couldn't even begin to comprehend.

Theta was the one single person on their entire planet who was even worth talking to, the only original mind in a society which hadn't produced anything new in millennia.

They reacted as all small-minded people did to something incomprensible: with criticism and avoidance.

Gallifrey didn't appreciate Theta at all.

That didn't seem right to Kossei. But it was their loss.

If they couldn't see what Kossei could, then he wasn't about to share his friend with a planet that didn't deserve him in the first place.

He was perfectly happy to have Theta all to himself.

Because Gallifrey without Theta was a truly unthinkable concept.

Everyone else was identical, too entrenched in their pettiness to realize... Theta was by far the best thing to ever come from Gallifrey.

Unified by their mindless adherence to the status quo, their common striving towards eternal, catatonic sameness, they ignored Theta, marginalized him... When they should be doing the exact opposite.

They should be _fighting_ for a chance to understand Theta.

Theta was something _new_.

Instead of recognizing the excitement in that, the endless possibilities, they refused to even see what they were missing, too blinded by their own willful stupidity.

How Gallifreyan society had produced someone like Theta, someone so far ahead of anything they could even imagine, Kossei had no idea.

But, unlike the rest of the planet, Kossei at least had the vision to appreciate the incredible, nonsensical impossibility that was Theta Sigma.

Even if he too couldn't understand him.

He considered his friend, watching as Theta navigated a thousand (mostly unrelated) ideas simultaneously. How he ever found any answers amidst the rampant imprecision, Kossei couldn't imagine.

"You have to admit you understand the appeal, though..." Kossei said slowly.

"Of what?" Theta asked, resurfacing from the torrent of ideas. "Of _magic_?" he said, answering his own question. "No," he replied flatly with a dismissive wave.

"Really?" Kossei challenged skeptically. "That moment of finding something new, something unique and inexplicable?"

Kossei had seen the way Theta's eyes would shine when he discovered a thing he didn't understand. Most people would run, or simply shrug off the mystery. Theta, by contrast, responded by absorbing himself in comprehending its depths immediately and completely. 

But that moment of delight and pure wonder...

That, Kossei had determined, was what the primitives meant when they called something _magical_.

Theta threw a glance over his shoulder. "Everything has an explanation. Magic presumes that there _is_ no explanation. We live in a Universe ruled by science, not magic. The concepts are antithetical."

"I know you don't respond the way most people would," Kossei chuckled, appreciating his own understatement. "But you can't tell me that you don't understand that feeling. You, of all people," he had to add.

"What does that mean?" Theta frowned, clearly wondering if he should be insulted.

"Nothing," Kossei smiled. To prove his point, he nodded towards Theta's scattered pile of components. "What are you building?"

Theta surveyed his own work with distant curiosity and shrugged. "I don't know..." he pondered. "It isn't done yet," he said by way of explanation. He went back to picking through the mess, seemingly eager to see what might happen next.

Kossei shook his head silently, knowing that Theta had missed the connection, as anticipated.

Science very well might have an explanation for everything. 

But Theta, firm proponent of said science, couldn't even explain _himself_.

"Calling reality _magic_ is misleading," Theta frowned down at whatever he might be constructing. "It's all so much more amazing than that."

Kossei sighed, realizing his friend was not going to come around to the concept.

It didn't matter, really.

They never agreed on _everything_... 

Which was fine. 

Because what fun would that be?

But Kossei had seen the way Theta looked at the Universe: as if it was a place of infinite possibilities, brimming with untold wonders. 

Theta was special, unique. No one else was like him. 

No one even came _close_.

And no one saw what Theta saw. Not even Kossei.

Kossei didn't ever quite understand his friend's perspective but... He did love to watch.

And it made sense, Kossei supposed, that Theta would entirely fail to appreciate the concept of magic.

Because, after all, Theta was right: everything _did_ have an explanation. It was just a matter of finding it. 

Usually, that didn't take long.

_Usually..._

Almost always, in fact.

In every case but one. 

One stubborn, fascinating, inexplicable outlying data point...

After all these years... Kossei was still searching for an explanation to his best friend.

He was sure there was a better word for Theta than _magic_.

But so far, he hadn't found it.

_The End_


End file.
